I heard back from The Good School. The one I was really hoping to go to. Oh but it turns out they didn’t like me so I can’t go there. So the only option is The Far Away/Expensive School. I’m contemplating doing it, but just don’t know. I mean the amount of money it’s going to cost coupled with the fact I’m not sure I’ll be able to find work when I graduate just makes going back to school seem not so desirable right now. Let’s be honest. I already have 2 useless degrees. Do I really want/need a third one?

Barring some monumental scholarship from these people I think I’m gonna at least defer for a year. Hopefully they allow that? I also plan to meet with the folks at The Good School and find out what in the world they were looking for in a candidate. I really thought I was qualified. Oh well. Maybe I’ll reapply at some point in the future.

On a related note, if I don’t go back to school I need to find another part-time job. Preferably in my field, preferably paid (Yep, that’s how useless my degrees are!). Anyone wanna hire me?

My flight this weekend wasn’t so amusing. First and foremost, it was pouring rain when we left. Sure indicator of a bumpy flight. Our flight out of town had been bumpy – super bumpy – but I was still able to catch a nap. Like I said, turbulence just doesn’t bother me. I expected bumps on this flight, and I expected they would be big. We took off and sure enough, we got rattled around pretty well. I saw some dude’s coffee come flying up, but to me that’s not an indication of a problem. It really just means you shouldn’t have drinks out during takeoff. It was bumpier than normal, and there were points in time where my alert system was pinged. Not scared at this point. Just on alert. A few more (big) bumps, and I heard a few women scream. Seriously ladies? Yes we are being blown around more than “normal” but let’s not lose it.

The combination of my alerts being raised and plain curiosity led me to brush up on the bracing positions we might take, should things take a turn for the worse. Pretty standard/nothing new. Then like clockwork, the plane hit cruising altitude and smoothed out. See ladies? Nothing to fret about. The flight attendants had taken orders prior to takeoff, and I was immediately handed a Diet Coke. Sweeeeeeet. Something told me I should hurry with it, so I chugged about 3/4 of it. Good thing too, cuz as soon as I stopped drinking, our plane dropped.

one-one-thousand-two-one-thousand

We stopped free-falling, probably because we were now bouncing side to side. My drink flew out of my hand, I hit my head multiple times on the window, and I heard a repeated KABOOM! in the back galley. Drinks and food were flying around. I heard someone come on the loud speaker saying something to the effect of “if you’re in an aisle seat and have an empty one next to you, move into it so the flight attendants can take yours.” I saw a minor shuffling of people, and three flight attendants picked themselves up off the cabin floor and took economy seats. Oh, and they didn’t leave said seats until we landed. At another point there was an announcement that if you have anything on your lap (computer, book, purse), put it under your seat and do it right now. I later learned someone had been hit by a projectile laptop.

Things were moving in slow motion. The plane was like a Yatzhee! cup, and we were the dice inside. At this point EVERYONE on the plane was screaming (free falling will do that to you). I looked around. About half the people I could see were in that “brace” position I had just read about. I heard the lamaze-style breathing of the businessman next to me, then realized I was doing the same thing. It really was helpful, especially as you realize the plane seems to be wanting to do a barrel roll to the left, and I’m pretty sure commercial airliners aren’t meant for that kind of trick. Dear God, if this is the end of the road please make it come quickly.

Things eventually settled down and I realized I was shaking. Like Parkinson’s shaking. We hit a few more rough patches, but nothing quite like that. I finally stopped shaking once I was home in my PJs, wrapped in a blanket on my couch. How’s that for a rough flight?

Yesterday I would have been apprehensive to get on a plane. Today I’m ready to get back on the horse. Can’t let these things get you down, especially when flying is one of your main modes of transportation!

Vatican tried to keep Irish child rapist as priest

I consider myself lucky. I went to Catholic school from K-12. My K-8 was located on a property with a church that had 10 or more priests. Priests constantly came and went. Thankfully nothing happened to me. Unfortunately, a boy at a nearby Catholic school was molested. This is just not OK.

I was at my old K-8 last month with my family and fiance. It was their annual carnival and priests were wandering around. Keep in mind my fiance attended public school and is not Christian. His ignorance about why things were done the way they were really opened my eyes. This conversation in particular really woke me up:

Fiance: What grades did the priests teach?
Me: They didn’t teach. We had all female teachers, and they had nothing to do with the church
Fiance: Then what did the priests do?
Me: They just wandered around campus at recess and lunch
Fiance: Wait a minute. You had Catholic priests wandering school for no purpose other than to spend time with little boys and girls?
Me: Well they played with us at recess. Showed us magic tricks.
Fiance: Um you’re proving my point….and did they give you Jesus Juice? That generally sounds like a bad idea

Again, thankfully nothing happened to me, or to anyone else at my school that I’m aware of. But seriously – with this kind of a set up you’re just inviting bad things to happen. It really makes me angry that not only is the coverup continuing, but there has been no change in the structure of the organization. Why are priests wandering elementary schools? Seriously. I am outraged.

On a happier note, this makes me laugh. Pope Benedict recently watched a show of half naked male acrobats (they were half naked cuz they stripped down in front of him…). There are way too many comments I could make, so I’ll just let you enjoy

Anymore = indefinitely.

I went to the foot doctor yesterday. Apparently my feet are “not anatomically designed for running”. What does that even mean? I have feet. They work (sort of). One in front of the other!

But apparently running is a problem. Something about everything in there being defective in some way, causing pressure in all the wrong places but especially on my nerve. So to avoid further nerve damage, I can’t run for the foreseeable future.

I like running though. And I certainly don’t like being told that I can’t do something. This might be a tough one for me. But I guess now is as good of a time as any to learn how to swim better. Or take my bike out. Pretty much anything that will give me exercise without another cortisone injection.

I’ve been planning to buy a Kindle for a while now. It’s going to be my birthday present to myself. But I couldn’t justify buying it super far in advance, so I waited til last week (still a month early). Fortunately for me waiting was good; a new version of the Kindle came out. I decided to go with the new one because I might one day want the 3G, and because it has less glare. It’s the same price I was planning to pay anyway, so it’s fine.

TOO BAD THEY’RE SOLD OUT.

I ordered it and the expected ship date is no later than 9/4. Um, hi, that’s like 3 days before I return from my trip. That’s not helpful.

My fingers are crossed, but I’m trying not to get my hopes up. Maybe they’ll have more in stock before I go? I paid $19 more for overnight shipping. If it’s not ready within a few days of my trip I’ll just put it back to the slow/free method and shed a tear or two. And then steal my mom’s

After he died my parents started going through the house. They secured several firearms. One story that still makes me laugh:

Mom: “We found this revolver with no serial number, not registered. I didn’t know what to do with it. I mean it’s a gun. I certainly don’t want it.
Me: “So what did you do with it?”
Mom: “Well David (family friend) was there. I looked at him and said ‘David, do you want a gun?”
Me: “You gave him a gun?!?!”
Mom: “Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”
Me: “Um. A lot of things. Does he have a gun permit? The gun isn’t registered. I’m pretty sure that’s not legal.”
Mom: “Well he has other guns. I figured I don’t want this near me. Should I have done something else?”

Gotta love my mother. (For the record she made him bring it back and is going to get it registered.)

So then several weeks later they’ve completed round 1 of the house cleaning. Secured all 8 of the firearms. This had my mom really nervous: “Caro, what do I do with these? I mean, I need to dispose of them somehow, but I’m not driving them somewhere. Taking them in my car. Where would I even take them? The police station? Just throw them on a table and say ‘Here officers. I don’t want these.’”

But then they found my uncle’s homeowner’s policy. The one that had the itemized list of firearms. 10 firearms. As previously mentioned, various family members had only located 8. So there’s 2 weapons unaccounted for somewhere in the house. Um…..that could be a problem. Know what else could be a problem? 7 of the secured guns were loaded. 2 of them fully loaded.

So basically there’s 2 guns MIA in the house. Possibly loaded. How does one lose 2 guns? Especially when one of them is a .22 caliber rifle with a scope.

Happy hunting to us. Literally!

Before I comment on the movie, I must comment on the things that happened before the movie. I saw Eclipse with my mom and sister. My dad felt left out, so he took my niece to see Toy Story 3, which was playing at the same time. However, we had to arrive at the theater over an hour early so we could brave the line of angst-ridden tweens who are obsessed with one or the other of the main characters in the Twilight Saga. This is a summary of the stuff I saw/encountered:

• Someone asked if the 4 year old would be coming into the movie. No we are not taking a 4 year old into a PG-13 movie she’s not old enough to understand and will easily be bored by. She actually said to me “Oh I thought she might be a Twilight fan”. Are you kidding? She’s 4. YOU ARE CRAZY and shouldn’t be allowed to have children
  
• The theater had set up chairs for us to use while we waited in line for the theater to open. Seated next to us was a group of 4 maybe 13-year-olds. (I say maybe because kids are looking younger and younger to me, and yes that DOES make me an old lady.) They all have on these bracelets, the rubber kind that were made popular a few years ago by the LiveStrong Foundation. Except these bracelets said “I <3 Justin Bieber” … I tried to covertly take a picture but the chick closest to me kept moving her arm.
• When we got into the theater I realized I was sitting next to the only grown man at this showing. Was he there with his teenaged daughter? Nope. He was there with his same-age girlfriend.
• The remainder of the theater had an average age of about 15 (my mom, sister, and I raised the average significantly). There was an occasional teen guy, obviously dragged there by his girlfriend. Some tried to cover their faces, others embraced this as a challenge. It was entertaining. Especially the dude in the Edward shirt LOL
• Before the movie started, a woman came into the theater to sell Twilight t-shirts. OMG they’re selling t-shirts here? It’s like a concert. Only not. I think the most entertaining part of this is that people were screaming with excitement about this prospect, but not a single person purchased a shirt. I guess they should have asked their parents for more money!

sorry so grainy!

• The movie started and I swear I lost some of my hearing when Jacob first came on the screen, shirtless of course. I’ve never heard girls shriek at such a decibel before. It’s mind blowing.

Anyway that’s all of my observations. I was expecting the shrieking, I was expecting the tweens, but the other stuff was just icing on the cake. Now onto the movie:

It was good! I could have waited to see it a week or two, but I definitely enjoyed it. The acting was significantly better this time, although Kristin Stewart is terrible regardless. The special effects were also pretty awesome. The plot is the one thing that bothered me (well besides the fact that the whole thing has blatant Mormon overtones and the fact that the main female character is so unbelievably weak. But those were just a given). I mean, you could remove this entire movie/book and nothing would change in the saga. We’re still left where we were at the end of New Moon – Bella and Edward are going to get married, Jacob is in love with Bella.

Regardless of the negatives, it was still well worth my (sister’s) $11. Very entertaining – 4 stars.

Product highlights include:

• Each capsule has 200mg of caffeine and dishes it out in steady doses throughout an 8 hour period
• Vegetarian capsule! (Super important – can’t cut out an entire demographic of potential customer! lol)
• Pure, unprocessed (non-synthetic) caffeine from Colombian Green Coffee Beans (unprocessed and direct into your capsule?)
• Special coating to reduce the potential of an upset stomach (none of those pesky ulcers coffee can give you LOL)

Next thing you know there will be an injectable version of this product. Injectable caffeine: the gateway drug to heroine. Purchase yours here for only $8.99 (box of 12)!

It’s my own fault and was bound to happen at some point. After all, I’m the one who decided it would be a GREAT idea to go back to school, borrow a boat load of money to finance said education, and now am stuck in a profession where I can’t find a job that pays. Seriously. My “job” in my field – yeah it’s unpaid. I work full time on the side for income so I can work for free.

Why did I think this was a good idea again? I can’t for the life of me recall what I was thinking.

Anyway enough whining. I made my bed. Now I have to lay in it. I need help cutting costs. So far this is what I’ve thought of:

*Bring lunch to work Monday, Wednesday, Friday (easy). I probably already do this 1-2 days.
*Bring lunch Tuesday/Thursday – trickier because of a lack of refrigeration/microwave. I’ll have to work on this one.
*STOP the starbucks trips. This was a bad habit. Although I have had a gift card so I’m not sure how much I’ll actually save.
*No more dinners out. Those are expensive and probably not good for my waistline anyway
*No trips to the mall. None. I should probably avoid Target while I’m at it.

Where else can I save a few bucks here and there? I guess I can take the bus to work 2-3 days a week. That will save a minimal amount of gas. Might actually help Marla too. I need ideas from all my other recessionista friends!!

• Andrew and Rhianna got married. It was a beautiful ceremony and a super fun reception. It was also my first run at being a bridesmaid and it was a completely different experience than I had imagined.
• My cousin got engaged. I’m totally stoked for him.
• I went to the doctor (again) for my foot. After 2 MRIs and 2 appointments within 4 days, I finally have a clearer picture of what’s going on with Marla. There are 3 issues total in my one foot (ffffuuuu). It IS a tumor, but it’s not cancerous. Hopefully the painful cortisone shot I got will make this issue go away once and for all.
• I took a small (but very eventful!) road trip last weekend with some wonderful ladies to attend Jess’s bridal shower. It was a lovely event. I won a prize too
• My great uncle went to the ER yesterday morning. He died today. It never really occurred to me prior to yesterday that when you say “great uncle” people kind of brush you off assuming this is a distant relative and it’s not a big deal. On the contrary, I was incredibly close to this man. My mom lost her father when she was 23. Angelo stepped in and became a second father to her, even walking her down the aisle at her wedding. I’m absolutely devastated.

There’s not really much else to say. It’s 4:45am and I can’t sleep. I can say this: I have the most amazing family and an incredible boyfriend. I know that while I’m crumbling into pieces I am loved and supported. We are a close knit group and this loss has brought us closer. For that I am grateful.

And now back to Boy Meets World. Because that seems to be the only thing on at this hour.